Bigger & Better-Equipped

While arguments about agricultural polity were being assembled and polished for the coming battle on Capitol Hill, the Bureau of the Census last week came forward with some hard facts about U.S. farms and farmers. Reporting on its latest census of agriculture, the bureau noted some significant shifts in life on the farm between 1950 and 1954. Items:

P: The number of farms in the U.S. decreased from 5,382,162 to 4,782,393. More than half the decrease occurred in the South, largely because sharecropper and tenant farmers left the farm and turned to the rapidly growing opportunities in industry. Most of the fall-off came in small farms--between 10 and 100 acres. 1% The number of farms decreased in every state except Florida, where the new boom in agriculture (TIME, Dec. 19) pushed the number of farms up from 56,921 to 57,543.

P: As other farmers took over the land previously worked by those who moved off, the average-size U.S. farm rose from 215.3 to 242.2 acres. (Thirty years ago the average farm size was 145.1 acres.) In the West the average is now 798.4 acres, in the North 212.6, in the South 166.8.

P: The percentage of farmers who own all or part of their land went up from 73.2% to 75.6%, the largest proportion ever recorded.

P: The number of farms with telephones increased in every state, went up nationally from 2,057,984 to 2,331,709, which is 48.8% of all farms.

P: The number of farms with electricity went up from 4,213,314 to 4,448,462, a blanketing 93%.

P: By last year 1,699,162 farms, approximately one-third of the total, had television sets, nearly all bought since 1950.

P: The number of farms with home freezers more than doubled, from 650,683 to 1,542,090.

P: The number of farms with tractors went up from 2,526,221 to 2,876,526.

Another interesting analysis of the U.S. farm situation appears in a recent issue of the Economist. At the top are some 100,000 big "factories in the field." They produce 26% of all farm products. At the bottom are approximately 1,000,000 small marginal farmers (80% of them in the South), who produce only 8%. No matter what the Government's farm policy may be, this group has little prospect of improvement. Much of their land is unsuited for modern machinery. Their hope lies in industry, not farming. There are also some 1,700,000 small farms that are more residences and hobbies than they are means of making a living; they contribute only a small percentage of total farm production.

That leaves slightly more than 2,000,000 of real, productive "family-size" farms. These produce 60% of all agricultural output, and the men now operating them are netting on the average some $4,000 a year. It is this group of farmers around which the farm-policy argument turns. Their present income is lower by about 10% than it was three years ago. Considering the skill and the capital that their job requires, their income is low compared to other U.S. workers. But their position is not one of desperation or distress.

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